We are just our bodies. As I consider the reasoning behind this belief of mine, it looks very similar to my belief that there is no God. However, althugh I believe both, I've grown much more comfortable with the latter than the former. But, investigating them closely, they seem to be based on nearly identical paths of evidence and logic. So I should be equally comfortable with both. But then why do I hesitate more (by just a little) to say I believe that I am just my body than that there is not God?

As you read through the following description of the "I am just my body" belief, keep in mind the corresponding argument for the "there is no God" belief. Notice the similarities.

My brain said:

Of course, the issue regarding whether I am just my body or if there is something more to my self is impossible to judge with finality. We know through testing that we are _at least_ our bodies (because our selves are reachable via them, as in certain neurological experiments (and all of experience itself)), but we cannot (so far) test for anything beyond that. And if we someday found some new physical component to our selves that we hadn't known previously, we would just start considering it to be a part of our bodies that we weren't aware of before. Once we recognized it, we would not go on from that point thinking of it as something physically separate from us (in the sense that the entire physical world is "physically" connected).

So, we have evidence that we are at least our bodies, but no evidence beyond that. Naturally, we believe only as much as we have evidence for. But do we believe that that is all there is? Note:We need to consider "belief" as having an associated level of certainty. You can believe something with various levels of certainty and we consider it a "belief" regardless.

I say that we are just our bodies, but I realize that we have the subjective sense that some part of us (the observer) exists without physicality. And I account for this by claiming that it is illusory. In other words, our brains somehow generate for themselves an illusory sense of non-physical existence.

Now, follow this same thought process yourself for the belief "I exist".

Image by Roshnii

Ryan Dueck wrote a mostly excellent article that was just published on "The Other Journal". It's a summary of his graduate thesis at Mars Hill Graduate School and I hope he gets an A on it.

I really enjoyed reading the whole thing, and found it extremely well written and thoughtful. For most of it, although I sensed it's criticality of the "new atheism" movement, I found myself wondering if it was actually written by an atheist in disguise. The restatements of the atheist position seemed extremely fair-minded and well stated. And the casting of "protest atheism" as a sort of argument from theodicy (in a broader sense) was especially interesting.

But as I neared the end and he started drawing up his conclusions, one big mistake became apparent, and unfortunately it ends up permeating quite a lot of the end of the piece. I've devoted this post to pointing this mistake out in its different guises, but I want to say first that this is overall a really great work and I hope it gets widely read.

The fundamental problem that permeates the later sections is the mistaken impression that the atheistic/scientific worldview holds that reality is nothing more than [insert mechanistic explanation here] or that it should be expected to explain (yet fails at doing so) purely mechanistic explanations for the moral judgments of its adherents. But this is incorrect in at least two ways:

1. Our worldview makes no claims to completeness.
You generally won't find the formulation "X is nothing more than Y" in the modern atheistic arguments. Instead, what you will find is an evaluation of which beliefs are better supported by evidence and more logically consistent than others. But to say that a theory or a belief is poorly supported by evidence is not the same as saying it is impossible. By the same token, to say that a theory is strongly supported is not to say that it is objectively true - and certainly not complete.

But more importantly:
2. Emergence explains why it's wrong to expect purely mechanistic explanations for all abstract phenomena.
There are different levels of conceptualization at play in how we all describe and explain phenomena, and the mechanistic one is only one of these levels. It is very mistaken to insist that a mechanistic explanation be made in support of every position, because this is to ignore the fact that abstract patterns emerge from less abstract levels of conceptualization. Admittedly, something is lost in the process of reductionism to mechanistic terms: the emergent patterns or properties. Emergent properties are not seen as more or less "real" than mechanistic accounts. They are equivalent in a sense, but to say that one of them is "nothing but" the other is to miss the entire point of emergence.

The previous point comes into play specifically regarding evolution and morality when it is claimed that moral behavior is incompatible or inconsistent with evolutionary explanations for our physical design. But moral tendencies have many well supported genetic/evolutionary explanations. In addition, individuals build on this by being taught. Of course, these teachings often come clothed in religion, but the religious clothing is unnecessary. Moral teachings are no less effective when they are divorced from religion.

Choice quotes:

"On the one hand we are told by the new atheists that human beings are nothing more than the result of a dysteleological, amoral process which rewards self-preservation by any and all methods. What we think of as evil is only a peculiar feature of our own psychology, for objective values are not “out there” in the natural world. On the other hand the new atheists present us with endless moral proscriptions against credulity and superstition and violence."

"By revealing their concerns primarily to lie within the areas of truth and ethics (not adaptive utility, which is all that could conceivably matter on a naturalistic picture of the world25), the new atheists locate themselves squarely within the orbit of the Western worldview so profoundly influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition. They show themselves to be deeply committed to a just and morally-ordered world—a commitment that makes little sense on a view of the world which sees all of life as, ultimately, a survival game."

This is an example of falling for #2 above. By setting up the mechanistic/evolutionary account for our physical design as being in contrast with the fact that we adhere to cultural standards of morality is to confuse different levels of abstraction. Humans are obviously more than just their physical makeup. No reasonable atheist would dispute this, and there is nothing inconsistent about someone both believing in Darwinian evolution and subscribing to cultural standards of morality.

"The new atheists’ indebtedness to the Christian heritage of which they are a part is revealed, although never acknowledged, in the very act of demanding a more close connection between “is” and “ought.” The protest against evil only makes sense on the supposition that the world should be better than it is, yet it is precisely this presupposition that is impossible to read off of a thoroughly naturalistic understanding of the world."

Again, the same bad comparison. Plus this time the addition of an "indebtedness to Christian heritage". Whatever contributions Christianity might have made to our current cultural standards of morality are not relevant here (but, of course, I have no problem acknowledging them). What is relevant is that we are here now. We are all here in this culture and we were all more-or-less taught the same standards of morality through various means (parents, church, school, television, etc.). And being here as members of this culture is all the qualification anyone needs to be rightly justified in making moral protestations. There is no need to reconcile this with a purely mechanistic worldview in the sense that this article seems to expect because the two explanations belong to two different levels of abstraction.

"But the Christian believes she has good moral reasons to hope, even to expect God to right the wrongs of history, to expect the world to be better than it is. The new atheists have no such reasons. If anything, logical consistency ought to oblige them to express admiration for the adaptive benefits provided by religion and seek their furtherance."

The adaptive benefits are provided by culture, which has included religion but also so much more. Anyway, cultural standards of morality can currently stand perfectly well on their own without religion as a prop. Maybe this wasn't always the case. Perhaps religion was once a necessary support to hang moral teaching on, but this is no longer the case. Some of the least religious countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland) also have extremely good records when it comes to violent crime, theft, etc. Compare that to the US...

"What is not provided is a plausible account of why human beings should have such a strong moral reaction to the nature of our environment in the first place."

This is plainly false. First of all, evolutionary accounts of morality do exist in abundance - not just for humans but for other animals as well. They are easy enough to find.

That said, the moral instinct that is provided by genetics is not the full picture. Of course, nobody thinks that all human qualities are a direct result of Darwinian evolution. Evolution only accounts for our physical makeup, but once our nervous systems are formed (if not before) exposure to the environment becomes increasingly significant. Nobody is denying the effects of culture on the human mind. Evolution and culture seem like plausible enough accounts to me. What more can rightly be expected from us?

Image by Andyrob

The Barefoot Bum, as usual, has a great post up today. Please read it before continuing to the below.

I agree that science is ultimately about relational, not intrinsic properties (considering pseudo-intrinsics to be relational). Science reduces to measurements and logic. And all measurement is inherently relational - how could it be otherwise? Measurement is always relative to some standard, which itself may or may not be fixed to intrinsics. Of course, if the standard does happen to be an actual intrinsic, this itself is unverifiable (e.g. unmeasurable). To measure a property as intrinsic, the standard for measurement must itself be intrinsic. And so on for ever and ever. Amen.

Just to make the statement, as Mark does, that physics does not "tell us anything about the natures of the entities that enter into these relations" is to presuppose the conclusion that they have an ultimate nature to begin with. This is unscientific. As Larry says, though, this is the intuitive view. This intuition seems to be the only support that Mark has going for his implicit assertion that intrinsic properties might be there to be ignored by science. On what grounds does he trust his intuition that intrinsic properties exist in the first place? As I've explained, he certainly has no evidence (e.g. measurements) to support this.

So this whole issue boils down to measurement versus intuition, which is another way to say "evidence versus faith".

I'm glad Larry brought up the hybrid concept of pseudo-intrinsics. Of course, although these properties do not (so far as we can tell) vary depending on their frames of reference, they are still relational in that they are ultimately defined relative to other relational properties. They are only called pseudo-intrinsic because they are thought to be independent of reference frames, not because they can be measured relative to verifiably absolute standards. They at least have an operatively intrinsic nature, though. We can afford to think of them as intrinsic (meaning the rest of our relational network will not suffer).

Sam Harris makes a similar point regarding standards of morality. Although the moral framework adopted by most non-religious people is a relativistic one, there are yet some pseudo-intrinsic standards of morality that we operate under as if they were intrinsic or absolute. Suffering, justice, freedom. We operate under these standards due to our genetic and cultural conditioning, but that doesn't make them any less operative, "universal", or useful.

Idolatry, of course, is the worship of an idol instead of the deity itself. So what is an "idol"? A naïve interpretation would limit "idol" to only physical representations of gods, like the gold idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But the modern sophisticated understanding is more abstract. Idols don't have to be physical representations, but can be any man-made representation, physical or otherwise. Wikipedia puts it like this:

"[Idolatry is the] worship of any cult image, idea, or object, as opposed to the worship of a God."

So the essence of an idol is not its physicality but its artificiality. Idolatry, at its essence, is about people worshipping the symbols instead of that which is symbolized.

And this is where it gets interesting for me. We think in symbols, so whenever someone imagines God as an entity with describable qualities, they are actually creating a mental idol for themselves. This is unavoidable because the very act of conception of a thing is necessarily an act of casting it in terms of one's own internal symbolism, etc. Thus, conceptions are inherently limited. And the worship of a conception of God is idolatrous.

But this is what so many people worship!: their own conceptions of what they think God is - and everyone has a different conception of it.

So...how to correct this? What could possibly remain to be worshipped in any meaningful sense once one has done the hard work of identifying and stripping away the projected (and thus essentially anthropomorphic) qualities?

This is something I particularly love about Buddhism: the great deal of care that goes into distinguishing between mental constructs and pure observation. The Buddhists have a saying that I really dig. I don't think they call it idolatry, but it seems to be about the same thing. It goes like this:

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him".

References:

Here's a great article by Sam Harris that plays off the above Buddhist saying.

Idolatry described in the Catholic Encyclopedia

A Wikipedia page on idolatry

Image by giopuo

This will be the last post on http://sansfaith.blogspot.com. The blog will continue on at http://onfireforreason.blogspot.com.

When I started http://sansfaith.blogspot.com, I wasn't ready to commit to "On Fire for Reason" as a title, but I've gotten several encouraging comments about it and the name has stuck. So now I just want the URL to match.

I'll be copying over all my posts.

Three Decembers ago, it looked like my grandfather was nearing the end of his life. His decline had been a long one, and my mother had basically retired early to be able to take on more and more of the burden of managing his affairs as he progressed through old-folks homes and weathered various minor injuries. This was a full-time job for her at the best of times, and became a round-the-clock commitment near the end. From his perspective, I think the most significant thing she did for him was to reassure him that he had a competent advocate and wasn't being abandoned to the system.

A particularly deep distrust of "the system" (in whatever form it happens to take) is a quality that he, my parents, and I all share with each other. For his part, I would guess it had something to do with how he was raised: the great depression, combined with his mother's debilitating depression and alcoholism, led his parents to commit him to an orphanage when he was a young boy, and he remained there through high school.

The hospital had a way of bringing out intense feelings of paranoia in him, even twenty years earlier when he had his heart bypass surgery. At the end of his life, weakened by years of bi-weekly dialysis and utterly unable to do anything on his own anymore, my mother made sure he was never alone.

I was lucky enough to be in between projects at work and had three weeks of vacation saved up that I could combine with xmas holiday time. So I took a month off from work and spent it assisting my mother and grandfather.

Whenever I'm forced to confront something uncomfortable, my primary defensive reaction is to consider it in a more and more abstract manner until it doesn't hurt so much. This has the effect of distancing me from the uncomfortableness without making me feel so much like I am avoiding or repressing it (whether that's actually true or not). I watch the situation both in front of me and in my mind as an observer more than as a participant. I think about the situation, which allows me to feel it less. I even think about this very fact (and so on).

One outcome of all this thinking/distancing was the realization that part of my mind is pretty much constantly devoted to working out pragmatic justifications (cost/benefit analyses) for why I feel compelled to do the things I do. In the arena of altruistic behaviors, I very much tend to justify them based on their being a good investment (what goes around comes around). But, sitting there alone with Grandpa, this didn't quite compute, because he wouldn't be around to repay me. I eventually chalked it up to my own desire to stay true to and constantly reinforce my sense of self-identity. I act morally even when the return on my investment is unlikely because I want to be able to continue to think of myself as a moral person.

Please don't misunderstand - this is merely how I make sense of my behaviors after the fact, not some guideline by which I decide when to act altruistically and when not to. I act first, then justify later. Of course, there is a feedback loop there though...

Anyway, over the course of that month, I spent many hours sitting next to Grandpa's bed in the hospital. He was usually pretty zonked out, but even if he had been his old self, we wouldn't have talked much anyway - that's just how we were together. So I spent most of the time either practicing meditation or working on cryptic crossword puzzles. I did, however, witness a couple brief windows of lucidity, which I'll forever remember fondly:

Once, while it was just the two of us, he said to me "tell your mother you love her". I assured him that I would, but the conversation didn't continue. Then there was this other time during a diaper change - he was on his side facing me and the nurse on the other side of him. I made eye contact with him and he mouthed the words to me "fuck you". Funny guy. It made me smile.

My aunt told me about an xgiving dinner she had with him and my mother, et al, during which he choked on some food and had to be Heimliched by my step-father. Just after the excitement was over he looked over at her and said "see what you have to look forward to?".

A week before xmas, the doctors advised that it was time to stop dialysis. This would give him about a week before his organs all shut down. Mom knew that he'd want to be somewhere that felt like home, so we set up his hospice bed in Mom's living room a few days later and he lived his last two or three days there. By xmas, he could barely eat and drink, but we gave him tastes of coffee using little sponges on plastic sticks and made him fried potatoes which he managed to swallow. I and others took turns reading him his favorite poetry. He died late xmas night after we all had done the holiday thing in the living room beside him.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fact that, as far as one's mental relationship to the world is concerned, it all boils down to our constantly testing the world (including our own brains, and the two relative to each other) for consistency.

At a physical level, this is the essence of how the brain works (selective reinforcement and weakening of connections based on how repeatedly they get stimulated). And I think from this most basic physical level all the way to our most abstract levels of pattern recognition, this is a fundamental truth that undergirds all cognition. Consistency is our most heavily relied-on (or only) tool for making any kind of sense out of our experience. It is the basis of all logic and the instinct for reasoning is an eventual result of this (with many other results along the way).

I'm into meditation ('though not as disciplined as I'd like), so I'm curious about how this works while one is meditating - observing without (or with much less) conscious thought. The brain is still at work, reacting to the stimulation it continues to get from the environment. Connections between neurons are still being modified (created, strengthend, weakened). In another way to look at it, the meditating mind is still building and modifying its own patterns of expectation about the world. So thought itself isn't actually required for the brain to continue modifying itself based on these consistency "tests". All the way down to the level of individual neurons and their interconnections, consistency testing is a primary driver of the brain's evolution throughout one's lifetime.

This, I suspect, is central to why we all rely on reason. It's deeply rooted in all of us by design. We are hard-wired to be consistency testers. Of course, some of us are better than others, and there are flaws in the system. But, just to tie this up to the theme of the blog now, this addresses one of those popular tactics of the faith-apologist: that faith and reason share an equivalence of sorts as two distinct but legitimate routes to knowledge, just concerning different types of knowledge. They are not equivalent in this sense, and the choice isn't between one or the other, but between reason alone or both together.

We all rely on reason to justify beliefs in general, but only some of us invoke faith. Reason is innate to all of us, and faith is an add-on, cultivated by some and minimized by others. Those who embrace and encourage it do so in an attempt to break free from the constraints of consistency. I see the appeal - it would be nice to be able to believe things just because I find them comforting. But unfortunately I am more interested in truth (or "consistency with evidence", if you prefer) than in comfort, at least at this point in my life. And I want the people around me to be more interested in truth than comfort as well.

Image by minette_layne

This is something that bothers me disproportionately during every election cycle.

I vote by absentee ballot, and in order for my vote to count, I need to sign my name under something called the "Oath of Voter". I don't object to this in principle, but the particular oath itself is really awful. Here's the oath, in full, with my comments in footnotes:

I do solemnly swear or affirm¹, under penalty of perjury that:

I am a legal resident of the state of Washington²;

I am entitled to vote in this election³;

I have not already voted in this election⁴;

It is illegal to vote if I am not a United States citizen⁵;

It is illegal to vote if I have been convicted of a felony and have not had my voting rights restored⁶;

It is illegal to cast a ballot⁷, or sign an absentee envelope on behalf of another voter, except as otherwise provided by law; and

Attempting to vote when not entitled, attempting to vote more than once, or falsely signing this oath is a felony punishable by a maximum imprisonment of five years, a maximum fine of $10,000, or both. A Power of Attorney signature is not valid in Washington State for the purpose of voting⁸.

Notes
1: I do appreciate being allowed to affirm as opposed to solemnly swearing, so they're off to a good start
2: I have no problem affirming this
3: Here's where it starts down the road of Stupid. I have relatively little problem with this point in particular, but I do have to admit that I am not an expert in state law, so I shouldn't be expected to know this with absolute certainty. To the best of my understanding it is true, but I'm slightly nervous about swearing that it is true (under penalty of perjury, no less).
4: No problem here
5: Why should I have to give an oath as to the truth of this? Firstly, I don't see the relevance. I should only have to swear to statements regarding myself, not to statements regarding State law! I'm pretty sure that it is true, though.
6: WHAT!? It's getting worse and worse!
7: I'm ready to cast the ballot into the fire now. Fuck 'em.
8: I'm exhausted from disgust. They're expecting me and all other voters to swear (under penalty of perjury, remember) to the truth of more and more subtle claims of legality. Not being a legal expert, this is beyond what I or any other average voter should be expected to swear to under penalty of perjury. We shouldn't have to swear to the truth of claims about law itself, but only about ourselves.

I know it won't end up mattering. I mean, what are they going to do, slip in a falsehood then convict every absentee voter of perjury? My problems, in summary, are the following:

It erodes respect (and enforceability?) of the oath. By including obvious irrelevancies, they diminish the impact of the relevent points.

Voters shouldn't have to choose between voting and swearing (under penalty of perjury) the truth of statements that they don't have the grounds for judging. I wonder if the state can be successfully sued for this somehow. It certainly feels to me like voter intimidation.

My thoughts centered around two things on the way in to work today. First, I designed the following sentence:

This sentence, paired with an altered version of itself in which the phrases appearing before and after the next “is” are switched and all occurrences of “next” and “previous” are swapped, is an example of a chiasmus.

Second, I got sucked into the conversation I was hearing on NPR. It was a particularly revealing interview, primarily because the guy being interviewed made it very clear (though inadvertently) just how constraining it is to be an ideologue. The thing that stuck out in particular was how he is an idealogue regarding the relationship between man and ideology. He thinks that ideology is an essential element that can't be overcome. Wow. Anyway, this might not sound like much yet, but it leads him down an interesting road regarding his opinions of Barack Obama (he thinks Obama is a bit of a phony because he won't reveal his ideologies to the world). I already liked Obama, but now I like him even more. I'll try to write more on this in the next post (or in one soon thereafter).

My wife and I just re-watched these two movies on DVD. I never noticed this before, but these movies are so similar that they're nearly identical but for the details. I really think that when they were developing the script for Crusade, they just took with the story for Raiders and slightly changed all the details, keeping all the superstructure the same. Instead of an ark, it's a grail. Instead of chopping the bad guy's face with an airplane propeller, they (almost) chop the bad guy with a ship propeller. Instead of Indy dealing with trillions of snakes, he deals with trillions of rats.

I'm also amazed not to be able to find anything about this fact through googling. If you find something, please let me know.

Details in order of occurence in Crusade (but the order is almost entirely the same for both films):

The opening action sequence, in which Indy wraps up a previous adventure
   CRUSADE:  Relic = The Cross of Coronado
   RAIDERS:  Relic = Gold Idol


Indy finishes teaching a class. Marcus Brody appears just as class is ending
   CRUSADE:  Girl leaves a note on his desk as she leaves
   RAIDERS:  Boy leaves an apple on his desk as he leaves


Indy receives a mysterious package in the mail
   CRUSADE:  It's his father's Grail notes
   RAIDERS:  It's Dr. Ravenwood's Ark notes


Indy is presented with the big quest
   CRUSADE:  The holy grail
   RAIDERS:  The ark of the covenant


Indy flies a plane to an exotic location, leaving a red line behind it on a map
   CRUSADE:  To Venice
   RAIDERS:  To Nepal


Indy meets the love interest
   CRUSADE:  Elsa Schneider
   RAIDERS:  Marion Ravenwood


Indy finds the first piece of the puzzle
   CRUSADE:  The X on the library floor covers a portal into the catacombs, where Indy will find the instructions on where to go next.
   RAIDERS:  The headpiece for the staff of Ra, indicating how to figure out where to go next


Bad guys show up and trap Indy and the love interest in the cavern
   CRUSADE:  In the catacombs. The bad guys light the oily water on fire.
   RAIDERS:  In the well of souls. Bad guys close the entrance.


Indy and the love interest escape
   CRUSADE:  via a sewer's manhole cover
   RAIDERS:  via a hole in a wall


On a vehicle, Indy fights bad guys while the love interest is behind the wheel
   CRUSADE:  the vehicle is a speedboat
   RAIDERS:  the vehicle is an airplane


Indy manages to get the bad guy up against a spinning blade
   CRUSADE:  the propeller of a big ship
   RAIDERS:  the propeller of the airplane


Indy meets with a friendly adviser who helps decipher the new clue
   CRUSADE:  Brody helps decipher the rubbing that Indy made from the shield engraving
   RAIDERS:  Old man translates the markings on the headpiece


Indy scuffles with local goons in the town square
   CRUSADE:  Brody is captured
   RAIDERS:  Marion is captured


Chase scene through rough roads. Crashing through stuff
   CRUSADE:  motorcycles versus truck. Crashing through a checkpoint gate
   RAIDERS:  horse versus truck. Crashing through construction-worker scaffolding.


Indy needs to choose between going after the captured comrade or going after the treasure
   CRUSADE:  At the fork in the road, he decides to go after the stolen diary instead of after Brody.
   RAIDERS:  In Belloq's tent, he decides to leave Marion tied up and go for the well of souls


Indy travels on a ship. The enemy is also onboard.
   CRUSADE:  They're on a blimp.
   RAIDERS:  They're on a large ship at sea.


Indy goes to investigate an unexpected change in the ship's motion
   CRUSADE:  The blimp turns around unexpectedly
   RAIDERS:  The ships engines stop unexpectedly


Indy abandons ship
   CRUSADE:  He escapes on a little airplane attached to the blimp
   RAIDERS:  He swims to the enemy's submarine and hitches a ride upon it


Indy's partner is recaptured
   CRUSADE:  After the plane crashes his father is recaptured and held in a tank.
   RAIDERS:  After the ship is boarded by nazis, Marion is recaptured by Belloq.


Indy finds the enemy's caravan as they travel through a valley
   CRUSADE:  Tanks and cars in the caravan. They have Brody and his father as prisoners.
   RAIDERS:  The enemy is on foot with the ark. They have Marion as a prisoner.


The bad guys get the treasure first, but they are not cautious enough and get killed for it
   CRUSADE:  Bad guy chooses the wrong grail, drinks from it, and he ages so fast that we see his face decay within seconds.
   RAIDERS:  Bad guys look inside the ark and their faces melt.


The treasure is ultimately lost
   CRUSADE:  Fell into the chasm
   RAIDERS:  Locked away by the US government

Image by anyjazz65

Our brains are so good at pattern recognition that they often (actually, always) go overboard. When the source data is visual or auditory this phenomenon is called pareidolia.

Here's an example where Jesus is seen in a dog's ass: (link)

Have you seen the claim by psychologists that our consciouss awareness can only handle 16 bits per second? (link) Our retinas alone transmit data at 10 million bits per second (link). Plus, subjective experience seems to contain far more than 16 bits per second of data, particularly in the cases of vision and hearing.

One explanation for this apparent contradiction is that our minds fill in missing details in order to make our conscious experience seem consistent and smooth. The filler detail is invented by the subconscious mind on the spot. This is easily demonstrated by experiments you can do yourself:

Blind spots: the brain invents information to fill in our optical blind spots

Saccadic Suppression: the brain also suppresses the optical signal from our eyes while they are in motion, then backfills the gap in the datastream.

As you can see particularly from the blind spot experiments, the brain fills in the gap with a surprisingly sophisticated guess at what should be there, based on the patterns in the surrounding data.

Our subconscious minds are constantly fooling our conscious minds into thinking that the world conforms to subconscious expectations. In other words, a big feature of our minds is that they work to find consistent interpretations of the world. This ever-present drive for consistency is the source of our innate sense of reason, which is paradoxical since it is reason itself that allowed us to discover the various ways in which our minds deceive us in order to build a consistent narrative. There are moments when this paradox makes me doubt (with discomfort) that consistency is essential for truth. Is this another symptom of Gödel's theorem?

Paradoxical or not, the fact that our reason is able to probe beyond this web of deceit (or at least find inconsistencies in it) is really impressive and remarkable.

Many people say that they trust their intuitions more than their reason (or faith more than science), but what I have described above should be a convincing argument against that. In any case, the reality seems to be that even when this is true for some people, it is not consistently true, but is only applied selectively for certain cherished beliefs. When people have a conflict of interests in the form of emotional investment in the intuitive conclusion being right, they manage to discount their reason. When this conflict of interests is minimal and intuition and reason happen to disagree, reason tends to win.

In a way, the "faith versus reason" argument all boils down to the question of consistency, then. Reason boils down to a constant push for finding consistent explanations for things. Faith is a matter of selectively relaxing this instinct in the face of an emotional conflict (e.g. cognitive dissonance).

Image by Atomische.com

Last year, I read Paul Davies' The Mind of God. I had become interested in him after seeing the video of him speaking at the "Beyond Belief" conference. His basic message was that it seems peculiar that the physical behavior of our universe is describable in terms of mathematics. I agree. It does seem like a weird coincidence that we should try to explain. I mean, math would still work regardless of whether the universe was describable by it. This is what Russell and Whitehead showed in Principia Mathematica...all math is reducible to axioms. No reason is apparent why math (a human invention) should be such an absurdly good tool for describing all the various physical phenomena we see around us.

Anyway, as interesting a question as that is, that's not what I want to write about now. Instead, there's this other thing he mentioned in the book: that the act of using mathematical formulas to describe the universe's behavior is actually an act of data compression. This idea really stuck with me and I keep seeing little reminders of it here and there. It's a fun way to think about physics (and other things too, it turns out).

Data compression is accomplished by recognizing patterns within the raw data, then substituting descriptions of those patterns for the data itself wherever the patterns are found. If things work out well (if your compression algorithm is well suited to the type of data being compressed), these descriptions of the patterns take up far less memory than the uncompressed raw data would have. To decompress, you just need to run the process in reverse on the compressed data. The logic that finds these patterns and uses them for compression/decompression is called the "compression algorithm".

For example, the string "eeeee" could be compressed as "5e", meaning "five e's". This is a very simplistic pattern, but you get the idea. More examp